Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]
222 – Folly

“This is sabotage,” Solomon Tetrarchus murmured grimly, his icy glare aimed at nothing in particular and yet it had the officer who had delivered the latest report freezing in place, the man’s face paling slightly at his commander’s tone. 

The virus-bombs, virus-torpedoes, the cyclonic torpedoes and another half a dozen varieties of exotic weaponry had gone missing in the last few minutes, seemingly without a trace. Thus, his previous plan of eradicating the Ork infestation on the lower decks of his ship had fallen through before it could even be put into motion. The order had gone out, but no one could find any of the containers used to store the life-eater virus’s pathogens. 

“The Orks are a distraction,” Solomon growled, clutching his armrest as his anger spiked. How could this have gone unnoticed? The armoury and the shrines of the Mechanicum onboard that were used to store their most important weaponry should have been some of the most well-defended places on his ships, just below in priority to the bridge of each vessel. He pulled up the holo-display of his ship, and after a query, narrowed his eyes. Out of every section that had something go missing, none had been taken over by the Orks … someone had snuck by amidst the chaos. “We have infiltrators onboard. Raise the security to maximum, they must still be onboard … they couldn’t have escaped through the portals, not this fast. And someone get me whoever’s in charge of the Astartes on a call-”

“We are being hailed, Sir!” the communications officer shouted in confusion, cutting off Solomon mid-sentence, and for a moment Solomon shared the man’s befuddlement, though he hid it better. 

“By whom?” he asked. There were no other ships in the System. The rest of his fleet wouldn’t hail him since they were already in the comm-network and the enemy was made up of bio-ships that couldn’t- … shouldn’t be capable of hailing Imperial communication systems. 

“The signal is coming from the direction of the enemy fleet, sir!” the man confirmed Solomon’s suspicion, putting a deep frown on the older man’s face.

“Put it through,” he said after a moment.

The holo-communicator, a massive piece of arcane technology allowing him to communicate with every Captain within his fleet at once, buzzed to life, and a single figure coalesced from the storm of light it spat out. The feminine contour of their body was the first thing he noticed, but the next was a malicious grin twisting otherwise delicate lips into something ugly and mean. 

When he looked into the eyes of the figure, even through the hologram had no colours or true depth, he felt a shiver run down his spine and a pair of emerald green orbs deeper than the abyss interposed themselves over the hologram in his mind. Solomon clutched hiss armrest, gritted his teeth and commanded his body to remain still to retain some of his dignity. 

The figure, whom he assumed was the object of all his woes in life, the enemy he was destined to vanquish, smirked at him in apparent amusement. Blasted Psykers, he hated them so very much. Freaks of nature that they were, they always unnerved him, just like Astartes with their aura of transhuman dread, but this … woman was something different. 

“Did you come to beg for mercy, freak?” Solomon bit out through gritted teeth. He dearly wished it wasn’t just bravado. “Save your breath, you are already dead. It is only a matter of time until our fleet grinds your abominations to dust and erases your blight from the face of the galaxy.”

“Mercy?” The woman mused, tapping her lips thoughtfully as she gave him another infuriating smirk. “I have no need of your mercy, Solomon Tetrarchus. No, I didn’t call you to beg for mercy, quite the opposite in fact: I came to gloat. You see, I just had a date with a Deathwatch strike team who were nice enough to deliver me not one but two handy little artefacts. Aren’t they nice? I didn’t even feed them to my pets as thanks. They’ll look nice in my collection, right next to your fancy little torpedoes. Never seen a virus-bomb up-close, or a Psyk-out torpedo for that matter, fancy stuff, that one. Nice of you to bring one all the way over here, it’s a nice gift. You truly know how to please a girl.”

Solomon froze for a moment, cursing up a storm inwardly while trying desperately not to show even a hint of his emotions on his face. If the widening grin on the woman’s face was anything to go by, he didn’t do a good enough job at it. 

“So they failed,” Solomon said neutrally, trying to sound unconcerned and while he sort of was, it unnerved him how the woman seemingly came out unscathed from a Deathwatch strike team dropping on her head with artefacts that were chosen specifically to counter her abilities. It didn’t bode well, but he wouldn’t allow it to discourage him. His mission must succeed. “I suppose that means we have to do this the hard way. No matter.”

Why was he even entertaining her? She was just dragging this out, wasting his time. He raised a hand, the command to cut the call already poised on his tongue when she spoke again. 

“Ah, sorry to disappoint, but no.” The holographic figure grinned a smile far too wide for comfort, showing far too many teeth. Humans didn’t have that many, nor did humans have pointed teeth. “It means you failed. I won. You just didn’t know it yet, which is why I felt the need to graciously inform you about this development, and since I am in such a good mood, I’ll let you leave my Star System unmolested if you hurry up and fuck right off right this instant. What do you say about it?”

The gloating, malicious glint in her eyes and the mean tilt of her grin told him much. She knew, somehow, she fucking knew he couldn’t accept that offer even if he wanted to. His fleet was incapable of operating itself, his personnel crippled, his ships nearly dead in the water. At most, his entire fleet had a day or two more in it, and then the people onboard would start to die. Dehydration, starvation and the rest. Without Navigators, leaving was assured death. 

“No,” Solomon said, scowling. “We will purge your blight from this galaxy or die trying.”

“Hmmm, unfortunate,” the woman mused, then shrugged. “But predictable. Oh well, it’s not like I thought this might end any other way. Give my regards to your Emperor if you meet him, though I guess the Daemons will get you first. They are having a feast, you know? Such a feast you gave them, they are still gnawing on the souls of all those poor Psykers you executed. On that note, what weight do your threats even have? You have no Psykers, the best Kill Team your Astartes had is gone, along with their watch-Captain, and so are all your nasty little toys. All the while, Orks rampage through your ships. You are practically neutered, a fangless kitten hoping to appear threatening by barking as loudly as it can.”

Solomon’s blood boiled in his veins. He disregarded her words; all the fallen were now with the Emperor, waiting for judgment. Even the Sanctioned Psykers, those freaks of nature, served the Imperium and wouldn’t be allowed to feed the Daemons. She was lying; that’s what heretics and witches did. Her words were worthless, meaningless noises, dust in the wind.

Alas, the last two sentences were just the facts, the unfortunate realities of the situation he had found himself in. His options had dimmed significantly since the day his Fleet left the Iron Ring. Still, pressed for options and cornered, he may be, but he was not dead yet. 

And while he wasn’t dead, he would continue fighting. And while he continued fighting, he had a chance of being victorious. With the Emperor’s grace doubtlessly on his side, these … setbacks were temporary, mere hiccups. 

He still had his ships, he still had a fleet. An astronomical amount of money, resources, and work goes into the creation of even the smallest of Warp-capable ships, so sacrificing an entire Fleet just to strike a blow to a single Rogue Psyker would be incomprehensible to most commanders of the Navy. An outrageous waste of Mankind’s resources, and something that would probably end his career then and there, likely staring down the barrel of a Commissar’s pistol. 

None of that mattered. His fleet was dead, all the men and women under his command were dead, and all of his ships were destroyed. It was inevitable by this point, just a question of when, not if. There was no such thing as ‘waste’ when it came to resources that were already gone.

“Cut the link,” Solomon ordered with an icy tone, glowering at the holographic image of his fated foe. When the hologram didn’t immediately wink out of existence, he slowly turned his gaze to the tech-priest fiddling with the machinery beneath. The woman was still mostly organic, so Solomon could see the nervous look on her face, the tiny shakes of her hand and the growing panic in her body language. “I gave you an order, what’s the problem?”

“The machine’s refusing the commands,” the woman said, her head swinging around to face him with a wild look in her eyes. “The Spirits, the Machine Spirits … they spurn us! Oh, Omnissiah, what have we done to offend you?”

Solomon reached for his connection with the ship’s Machine Spirit, using the cords jammed into the back of his head and linking his mind up to that of the machines through his brainstem. 

“Futile,” the aggravating woman, that deplorable Psyker said with clear disdain, like a great predator watching its prey writhe and flail pathetically before its inevitable demise. There was no doubt in Solomon’s heart that was how she viewed the current situation, and him. But no. He was no prey; he still had teeth. His mind reached for the Machine Spirit, aiming to command it to cut the link and engage the thrusters on full force. Even if he had to sacrifice half his fleet, he would cut through her haphazard, stolen Tyranid monstrosities. 

Alas, that line of thought, and all his plans along with it came to a grinding halt once more when he heard that same, aggravating voice speak directly into his mind. 

“It’s time we’re done with this farce,” the voice came, not from the hologram or any of the speakers. It was in his mind … coming from the Machine Spirit itself. 

“H-how?” Solomon said, his voice trembling, though he didn’t know whether from terror or rage. Maybe a bit of both. “You corrupted the Machine Spirit!”

“I did no such thing,” The ‘Machine Spirit’ spoke into his mind, then the hologram smiled and the woman’s voice resounded aloud once more. “I supplanted it with myself. You have lost this fight days before you first laid eyes on my Fleet. I’ve been told I play too much with my food, so I’ll cut this short. Goodbye, you won’t be missed, Solomon Tetrarchus.”

With that, the hologram blinked out of existence, and Solomon doubled over with his arms clutching his head as his connection to what he had thought to be the Machine Spirit tore apart. Dozens of alarms blared on the bridge, tech-priests screaming in horror and rage, while crimson lights lit up, signifying more and more systemic failures cascading across his ship. 

He managed to gather himself in a few seconds, straightening his back to gaze upon the scene of chaos and panic unfolding before him, in what had been his command deck just minutes ago. These men and women, the officers at least, were seasoned and calm, but the Mechanicus personnel and the younger ones, assistants and the like, were freaking out.

Honestly, Solomon couldn’t fault them too much; in his heart of hearts, he too was despairing, but he was good enough at controlling himself not to show it. His thoughts were focused more upon what the woman had meant. She had been talking like she would be killing him and eliminating the problem his fleet posed in the near future, but how? 

The lack of a Machine Spirit was concerning, to say the least, but not crippling, not with his virus-bomb plan having fallen through. He still had the personnel needed to operate his arsenal manually. The threat of Daemonic corruption infecting the machinery had just shot through the roof, but that wasn’t a short-term concern, and he had no long-term concerns to speak of, since he was dead already. 

“Order!” Solomon barked, glaring down at the holo-displays showing the advancing enemy fleet as a swarm of crimson dots closing in. “Throw out the tech-priests who can’t compose themselves! The rest of you, back to your station-”

Just as his calm, commanding voice started reasserting some semblance of order on the bridge, he caught something out of the corner of his eyes. A shimmer in the air, then a shadow fell over him, and Solomon almost fell out of his chair as suddenly there was a hunched monstrosity looming over him.

It looked vaguely like a tyrannid, but was covered in a pale white carapace from head to toe. He looked into a pair of pitch black eyes and saw nothing in them, no glee, no malice, and no hunger. It was dead as a machine, and yet it moved and breathed. Faster than any of his guards, or even his own enhanced eyesight could track, a scythe-like arm snapped out from under its shoulder and Solomon saw the room spinning around him as a sudden onset of weightlessness and nausea assaulted him.

His vision darkened, giving him a last glimpse of the command deck descending into utter chaos in truth as his honour guard opened fire while the rest screamed and scrambled for shelter. All in vain as the monster moved, bisecting a dozen veteran soldiers in a blink.

Then the darkness of death finally took Solomon Tetrarchus, and his severed head hit the ground.